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True cross-functional product development

“Cross-functional” collaboration in (agile) product development means that the whole (complete) product “development” team is participating. Scrum talks about a “development” team, without distinction of role. As such, “developer” means any competence or skill required to create the product or service, not limited to “programming” (writing code).

Lean UX heavily promotes the whole product development team participating during the complete product development cycle, from the very beginning. The whole team approach aims to create a shared understanding with everyone (all team roles) from the beginning and to minimize any waste originating from working in sub-teams or silos (hand-overs, intermediate deliverables, re-discussing the same topic with people who didn’t participate, etc).

Shared understanding

True agile teams (feature teams) are product-oriented and are able to implement product features end to end, creating pieces of value with every item done. Collaboration with all team members is a great source of creativity, new ideas and innovation. This kind of cross-functional collaboration is demanding: people are expected to think outside their box, to participate in work outside their main domain, and to help to create that necessary shared understanding to be able to deliver value within an iteration.

Teams working in a phased approach (the so-called staggered sprints) face a number of worries – this should not be accepted as common, and such teams should strive for a better way of working. A phased approach is basically some work done in a sprint before the “development” sprint (or even worse, acceptance or testing after the”development” sprint).

Improved time to deliver (precondition is to deliver chunks of value you are able to implement within a sprint)

Less re-work, less waste

Improved definition of done

Sense of ownership amongst all team members

And so, we urge you to re-consider any large upfront work (before “construction”), and try to create shared understandings with the whole team. That shared understanding will lead to willingness to truly collaborate together within the same sprint. In the Lean UX approach you foresee a regular cadence of user tests. The aim is to create a “test everything” culture: we test what’s available and given the users’ feedback, we improve (we iterate).